July 23, 2009
By Doug Demmons
It wasn’t that many years ago that the quickest way to get a NASCAR fan’s blood boiling about politics was to bring up welfare.
The idea that somebody got paid for essentially doing nothing just set people off, especially people who work their fingers to the bone at their own jobs.
But while the government moved to reform welfare back in the 1990s, NASCAR today fully funds it, encourages it, even romanticizes it.
The NASCAR community doesn’t call it welfare, of course. It’s called start and park.
But essentially it is getting paid to do the absolute minimum you can get away with.
You show up at the track with a bare minimum crew and just a few tires. If you make the race you don’t even bother gluing the lug nuts to the wheels because you have no intention of staying in the race long enough to change tires.
You just want your share of the purse at the lower end of the finish, which can be enough to pay the bills and keep a few folks on the payroll.
It’s a strategy for getting by. Drivers go along with it because it’s a way of staying in the sport, a reason to be in the garage every week and stay in touch with everyone just in case a real ride opens up somewhere.
NASCAR has no problem with this. Start and park, to NASCAR, is a way to keep the little guy in the sport, to give others besides the mega-teams a chance to compete.
That’s just a relatively inexpensive way to pay lip service to the romantic idea that a few guys in a backyard garage can put together a car and show up one weekend and compete. Face it -- those days are long gone and they aren’t coming back.
Plus -- by allowing the start and park circus to continue NASCAR is enabling a fraud on the ticket-buying fans.
When you buy a ticket to a race, do you pay to see five or six cars runs a few laps in the back then park it in the garage? Are you not insulted when those teams later say they parked because of a “vibration” or because of “handling?”
If NASCAR really wants to give these teams a chance to make it there are better ways of doing it.
Here are a few suggestions:
Establish a Start and Park Society (although a better name is probably in order). This group would consist of teams that attempted to qualify for at least half the races in the previous season and did not have an average finish higher than 33rd.
NASCAR would provide help to these teams that would improve their ability to compete rather than just writing them checks. In that way it’s sort of like helping a welfare recipient gain a valuable skill to compete in the job market rather than just writing him a check.
For instance, NASCAR could say that any team in this group that completes at least 25 percent of the laps in the previous race gets enough tires to compete in the entire next race for free.
NASCAR, of course, would pay for this because NASCAR says it is important to provide opportunities for these teams.
NASCAR could also provide for sanctioned test sessions and time in the wind tunnel for these teams during the year with NASCAR picking up the tab.
Of course, NASCAR shouldn’t have to pay for all of this. The teams that are doing well and making a handsome profit by having full fields could pony up a few bucks too. Baseball imposes a luxury tax to even out -- if only in a small way -- the playing field. NASCAR can do the same thing.
Tires and testing alone won’t do the trick. The start-and-parkers need personnel too. So how about pairing the start-and parkers with the super teams? Let one of Hendrick’s or Roush’s or Gibbs’ pit crews also service the cars of the start-and-parkers.
Call it a mentor program. Tommy Baldwin wouldn’t have to bring a pit crew at all to the race because a Roush crew or a Childress crew would service his car in addition to their own car. The Baldwin car would have to pit out of sequence but at least it would be able to compete for the entire race.
And isn’t competing what it’s all about?
So let’s stop enabling teams from living off NASCAR welfare and give them a real chance to compete.
Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow
Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougdemmons
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
You can contact Doug Demmons at ....
